0.

Conclusions and directions for further work

It is vital to develop policies with a view to continuously enhancing infrastructure and networks
interoperability and, simultaneously, seek soft formulas to improve infrastructure utilization and
service quality. Green logistics certainly constitute a “win-win” option for logistics participants,
as fuel economies can, in the short- or in the worst case medium- term, amortize prior
investments in ICT systems. The EU countries and its trading partners still have a great potential
to further improve operations management through the implementation of the technological
innovations introduced by the EU research projects on logistics.

Streamlining of maritime ICT operations and reforms towards seamless Pan European
compatibility and standardization by taking into consideration the solutions of EU commission
projects aimed at minimizing CO2 emissions are necessary, by curbing the various bottlenecks in
various procedures that are the reason for significant lead-times in international trade. What is
more, the highly successful case study of Singapore port, which is exemplary for the whole
world, also shows the optimum path in this direction.

As far as the sea (inland or short sea) transportation mode is concerned, ICT solutions for
improved vessel utilization through optimized fleet management (better deployment of personnel
/ fleet based on up-to-date information), coordination of freight distribution operations, more
detailed trip planning and draught management, better efficiency of inland navigation, or more
reliable time scheduling can minimize the fuel consumption per tkm which is the ultimate goal,
of course. The modernization and Pan European integration of the IT infrastructure supporting
ICT flows in port terminals is a top priority; this particularly applies to secondary European ports
of South Europe, which have lagged behind in IT, and the improvement potential through
business process reengineering is very high in these cases.

On the other hand, given that rail provides, as a rule, “greener” transportation performances than
road, every rail ICT feature enhancing the appeal of railway connections, and boosting the
market share of rail is definitely a green ICT tool. However, the interoperability problems of
Inter-European rail traffic and bottlenecks in intermodal logistics chains are also issues that need
to be taken into consideration and solved in an integrated manner, in order to achieve even
efficiency in transportation systems. But even road transportation (which is not considered
green) has a high improvement margin through investments in a more modernized fleet (e.g.
”green” trucks with Adaptive Cruise Control, various sophisticated Traffic information systems,
Toll systems, Invoice System), given that it is virtually impossible to shift a significant volume
of cargo flows of the supply chain to other transport modes, no matter how costly road
transportation is, in terms of KPIs, vis a vis the other solutions.
All these technological innovations additionally render the European economy more competitive
and create incentives to stakeholders to accelerate reforms in the Inter European logistics
industry which is of course profit-driven and capital intensive, so only policy overhauls do not
suffice to improve green key performance indexes fast in the coming years.

Task 4.1 constituted the basic taxonomy of problems and solutions with a view to develop a map
of relevant policy alternatives and measures useful

Based on the results of Task 4.1, Task 4.2 will thus identify application areas that are promising
for using ICT and information flows towards the goal of optimizing environmental attributes of a
supply chain, both context-wise and geography-wise.

All these steps are necessary for the further work for facilitating recommendations at the policy
level in WP 6, which aims to assist the Commission in integrating Green Corridor considerations
into the EU Freight Transport Logistics Action Plan, examine the implications of related
regulatory policies on the possible solutions proposed by the project, the possible implications of
the work produced during the project on regulatory and seek ways to resolve possible conflicts.

Thus, a complete harmonisation of policies on Green Corridors in both pan-European and

regional levels, but also as regards corridors between Europe and other parts of the world can be
achieved.